For years, Philadelphia police officers have been sued by people they arrested. Now, a federal appeals court says that they and police throughout the region can be sued by people they did not arrest. In a ruling that creates new grounds for civil-rights suits against police departments, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has revived a lawsuit by the parents of a Philadelphia woman who passed out on a frigid night and suffered severe brain damage after police stopped her for drunkenness and then let her walk home alone.

Danny Centrone, 38, who suffered permanent brain damage as a teenager when members of the Warlocks motorcycle gang beat him unconscious with chains in a shopping center parking lot in 1972, died Saturday at his home in Folcroft. "Danny has been a prisoner in his own body ever since his beating," said his mother, Greta Centrone. "The Danny that we've had around for 21 years was not my son. "Danny's where he should be - at peace," she said. She found her son unconscious on the bathroom floor Saturday night.

Calling it a sad situation for everyone involved, a Burlington County judge yesterday sentenced a Cinnaminson man to a year in prison for his role in a fight in which another man suffered brain damage. Jason Pabon, 19, told Superior Court Judge Marvin P. Schlosser that he was sorry for pushing Christopher Williams, 21, at a party in Palmyra on June 7, 1998. Williams fell, striking his head on the ground and lapsing into an 11-day coma. "If there is anything I could take back, it would be that moment," Pabon said, turning to Williams and members of Williams' family who sat in the courtroom.

A Common Pleas Court jury yesterday ordered three local doctors to pay half of a $49 million judgment awarded to a Port Richmond man who suffered severe brain damage while being treated for a rare neurological disorder three years ago. The jury ruled in favor of David Caruso, 23, who went to Neumann Medical Center in Port Richmond to be treated for Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder that results in paralysis and is often curable. But due to negligence on the part of Neumann staff members and the attending physicians, Caruso was left unable to walk, talk or move on his own, said his attorney, Shanin Specter.

The 1983 murder of Middletown pharmacist Richard G. Sharp was born of events years earlier, in the West Philadelphia home of young Clifford Smith, a psychologist testified yesterday in Bucks County Court. Patricia Fleming, who examined and tested Smith while he was on Pennsylvania's death row, spoke during the second day of a sentencing hearing about traumatic adolescent events that she said affected Smith's mind and actions as he and an accomplice staged an armed robbery of the Park-Woodbourne Apothecary on a Friday afternoon 15 years ago. Two childhood head injuries and a turbulent family life left Smith "incapable of conforming his actions to the law," said Fleming, a Wyoming clinical psychologist who said Smith suffered from brain damage.

Two teenagers were to be arraigned this morning on assault charges in connection with a fight that has left an 18-year-old with brain damage and the ordeal of putting back together the pieces of his life. Steve Jackson, 18, of the 100 block of Kelmar Avenue, and Robert Espenship, 18, of the first block of Ridge Road, were to appear before District Justice John T. Jeffers at 10 a.m. to face charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and simple assault stemming from the Jan. 21 assault of Joseph Tihansky.

A Pennsauken teenager accused of assaulting his infant daughter, causing severe brain injuries and a broken leg, will be tried as an adult, authorities said yesterday. Antwine Stevens was moved from the juvenile detention center in Blackwood to the Camden County Correctional Facility on Tuesday night after a Superior Court judge granted the state's petition to prosecute the 17-year-old father as an adult. Bail was set at $100,000. Authorities say Stevens and Dominique Coston, 18, attacked their 2 1/2-month-old daughter at their home July 16 after the baby's continued crying angered them.

A third teen agreed yesterday to be tried as an adult in the fierce beating of a Pennsauken High School senior who has been hospitalized since Nov. 2 with severe head injuries. Superior Court Judge G. Linda Baxter set bail for Thomas W. McKeown Jr., 16, at $30,000, twice the amount assigned to four other defendants. McKeown's bail is higher because his parents have moved from the Westmont section of Haddon Township to Philadelphia, Camden County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Luther said.

Nobody would want to trade places with Destine Weightman. She can't speak. She can't see. She can't play. Doctors say the only thing she responds to is pain. So the severely brain-damaged 5-year-old will never get a day of comfort out of the $24 million she was awarded yesterday in court. But it will pay the bills - something the Weightman family hasn't been able to do since Aug. 29, 1993, when Destine plunged into the deep end of a swimming pool in an Upper Darby apartment complex and sank to the bottom.

They met when they were in their teens. He had been abandoned by his parents; she suffered from depression. After a few years, they began living together in Lumberton, behind the shop where he repaired cars. They decided that a baby might solve some of their problems. But on Sept. 1, 1999, seven weeks after Shane Dixon was born, the couple's dreams were shattered. Shane, vomiting and purple, was airlifted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where doctors diagnosed brain damage caused by violent shaking.